Meet the British intelligence-linked firm that warped MH17 news coverage
BY KIT KLARENBERG · THE GRAYZONE · MARCH 5, 2023
In November of 2022, a final judgment arrived in the trial of alleged perpetrators of the attack on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17). Russian nationals Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinskiy, and Donbas separatist Leonid Kharchenko, were convicted in absentia for the murder of MH17’s 283 passengers and 15 crew members. They were ruled to have arranged the transfer of the Buk surface-to-air missile system that reportedly struck the plane.
Oleg Pulatov, the only defendant to seek legal representation during the trial, was conversely acquitted on all charges, which prosecutors will not appeal.
The Malaysian airliner had been purportedly shot down by a missile on July 17th 2014, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew aboard.
Heavily dependent on information supplied by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and the Western government-funded “open source” investigations organization known as Bellingcat, the guilty verdicts appeared to vindicate an established narrative in which Russia and its Donbas allies were solely culpable.
But as this investigation will reveal, much of the news coverage of MH17 was heavily influenced by a shadowy entity called Pilgrims Group, which is closely tied to British intelligence.
Staffed and led by British Special Forces veterans, Pilgrims Group is a private security company offering elite security services to London’s embassies, diplomats, spies, and business interests abroad, particularly in high-risk environments. It also trains foreign militaries and paramilitary groups, and provides protection to reporters and their employers.
It was in the latter context that Pilgrims Group shaped media coverage – and by extension, official investigations – of MH17. The company had maintained a presence in Kiev since the early days of the US-orchestrated Maidan “revolution” in late 2013, shepherding journalists to and from the scenes of major events in Ukraine. In the process, it maintained control over what the reporters under its watch saw and how they understood the situations they encountered.
As such, Pilgrims Group played a pivotal role in the effort by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and British intelligence to convict Russia and the Donbas separatists for MH17’s downing. The operation began while the plane’s wreckage remained smoldering on the ground of rebel-controlled territory, and ultimately prevented the initiation of any genuinely independent investigations.
Suspiciously quick off the mark
Before Malaysia Airlines publicly announced it had lost contact with MH17, Ukraine’s then-Minister of Internal Affairs Anton Gerashenko had published its flight number, destination, passenger numbers, the manner in which it crashed, the weapon used, and blamed Russia and Donbas separatists for the catastrophe.
From that point on, the SBU began flooding the information space with materials including intercepted audio of the separatists discussing a downed plane, as well as images its agents allegedly found on social media pointing to where the allegedly Russian-sourced Buk missile had been fired. Bellingcat, which serendipitously launched just days before, immediately seized on the deluge of carefully curated information.
With impressive speed, the US and British government-funded media outfit claimed to have precisely mapped out what happened and how. Bellingcat’s findings were accepted without a shred of critical scrutiny by the Western media, lawmakers, pundits, and the MH17 tribunal, which was launched on August 7th 2014.
In the process, any explanations for MH17’s downing that did not reinforce the official narrative either vanished into the ether, or were maligned as conspiracy theory or Russian “disinformation.” One compelling counter-theory for the aerial disaster was that the plane had been used as a shield by Ukrainian fighter jets to deter ground-to-air attacks by the separatists.
There are clear precedents for such provocative tactics. In 2018, for example, the Israeli air force tricked Syrian air defenses into accidentally shooting down a Russian spy plane by using it as cover for its own fighter jets. A leaked JIT document noted Donbas separatists were convinced that authorities in Kiev were keeping eastern Ukraine’s airspace open for precisely this purpose, having conversely closed Crimea’s at the time.
Furthermore, in a video published on June 18th 2014, separatists expressed concern that Kiev was attempting to provoke an in-air incident. Three days before MH17 went down, a Ukrainian military aircraft ferrying military equipment and soldiers to the frontline was shot down over Lugansk. Multiple witnesses have testified to the presence of Ukrainian jets in the sky near MH17, while contemporary local TV reports show a Ukrainian-operated Buk missile in the vicinity.
Yet, the JIT was simply unwilling to consider evidence diverging from the established Western narrative of MH17. And as the trial proceeded, Pulatov’s defense team, independent journalists and researchers attempting to challenge the long-established narrative of Russian culpability were subjected to vicious attacks from Bellingcat’s army of online trolls.
The SBU-directed propaganda blitzkrieg that immediately followed MH17’s downing ensured that the separatists accused of the attack, and the government accused of sponsoring them, were quickly convicted in the court of international opinion. This may explain why media reaction to the November 2022 verdict was so muted. Despite the enormous, enduring global outcry provoked by the MH17 disaster, the verdict hardly registered with mainstream journalists.
Yet many of the journalists that had covered the MH17 from Ukraine had been kept under the careful watch of an organization intimately involved with the same Western governments with a stake in convicting the separatists for the disaster.
British military veterans direct Maidan news coverage
Because Pilgrims Group operates largely in the shadows, references to the company by Western news outlets are extremely rare. However, the firm is well-known to all major media outlets, boasting on its website of “significant experience of helping to facilitate safe and secure news-gathering and film-making.” Pilgrims Group also claims expertise in ensuring that “journalists and production staff can operate safely and securely” in hostile circumstances, such as “underdeveloped countries, failing states and post-disaster environments.”
The British company made headlines for its work in late 2012, after armed militants abducted a six-strong NBC News team led by the network’s chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel, whom the company was guarding. Engel and his team were freed after five days in captivity, when a vehicle in which they were being escorted was stopped at a checkpoint run by violent extremist group Ahrar al-Sham.
This resulted in a shootout, in which two fighters who kidnapped the team were killed by Ahrar al-Sham. Initially, Engel claimed his captors were affiliated with the government of Bashar Assad, while NBC implied Ahrar al-Sham’s rescue was completely serendipitous. Subsequent investigations revealed the abductors were, in fact, affiliated with the CIA-backed Free Syrian Army, and the checkpoints had been deliberately arranged by Pilgrims Group, which praised the terrorist militia’s “brilliant job.”
Decisive interventions by Pilgrims Group elsewhere have received much less attention. On June 3rd 2014, the firm issued a little-noticed press release boasting of its reputation as “the security company of choice” for media organizations operating in Ukraine at every stage of the Maidan “political unrest,” working with “journalist teams throughout the country” during key “disturbances.”
Oddly, despite their coverage of these events presumably being very publicly disseminated across the globe, Pilgrims Group’s clients in Ukraine apparently “preferred not to be named” due to “the sensitive nature of their role.” Nonetheless, the company bragged that its teams were operational in many of the country’s “major population centres,” including Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kiev, Lviv, Odessa, “and throughout Crimea.”
“Pilgrims has been able to respond rapidly to broadcasters’ demands by drawing on its extensive networks to mobilise former special services personnel, who were on duty within 12 hours of the clients’ initial requests (and frequently considerably quicker). In addition, the company continues to maintain the highest level of awareness of the unfolding political situation in the Ukraine by maintaining its local contact network [emphasis added], with regular updates of information on the ground.”
Further detail on Pilgrims Group’s activities in Ukraine appears in a leaked June 2016 Foreign Office proposal to train Syrian rebel fighters in Jordan as part of the plan to overthrow the Syrian government. The company was central to the project, running “simultaneous training programmes around the world,” and therefore maintaining a “large and flexible pool” of staff who could be assigned to the mission. MH17 was cited as an example of the speed with which Pilgrims Group could mobilize its operatives.
“As a global risk management company Pilgrims are routinely required to expand their operational footprint and support tasks at short notice,” the proposal bragged. “Pilgrims supported a large number of media organisations operating in Ukraine, which peaked at 27 active security teams on the ground. When the Malaysian Airlines aircraft was shot down over Ukraine…Pilgrims generated seven additional teams within six hours [emphasis added].”
This proposal was submitted to the Foreign Office by Adam Smith International, a British intelligence cutout with an extensive history of scandal, corruption and collaboration with jihadist groups. As The Grayzone has revealed, the company also funded Bellingcat to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars in the 2019-20 financial year. Both organizations have refused to reveal the purpose of this sum.
Pilgrims Group has also offered protection to Western journalists in other conflict zones. The LinkedIn profile of senior company staffer and British Army veteran Chris Bradley lists his work providing “security risk management to two award winning news teams in Ukraine (2014) and Syria (2015), including coverage of MH17,” as one of his biggest “achievements” at the firm.
Given the insidious role played by London and its assorted intelligence cutouts in shaping worldwide media coverage of the Syrian civil war, such professional history raises troubling questions about Pilgrims Group’s involvement in influencing news coverage of MH17.
A frontline player in Britain’s global information war
Following the MH17 disaster, Western journalists flocked to the crash site while Ukraine’s State Emergency Service rushed to collect corpses. The collection work was halted after it came under fire from the Ukrainian army, however, and emergency workers left outright after Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) representatives arrived at the crime scene. But reporters under the watchful eye of Pilgrims Group stayed and continued their reporting.
Over subsequent months, as the remaining bodies rotted in the sun, OSCE monitors and pro-Russian rebels frequently left MH17’s wreckage unguarded for extended periods. It was not until November 2014 that the ground was comprehensively cleared. During that time, little would have prevented malicious actors from manipulating, removing or planting incriminating evidence at the site.
In order to operate in Ukraine, Pilgrims Group required the approval of the country’s government, as well as local security and intelligence services. Given the intense fervor with which these same actors sought to cement Kremlin culpability for MH17, Pilgrims Group’s work in managing the protection and travel of Western reporters provided a logical tool to assist this effort, as its operatives were literally able peer over the shoulders of journalists while they worked.
British spies consider MH17 key ‘disinformation’ battleground
Another extremely curious and thus far undisclosed component of the MH17 controversy is the clandestine role played by London’s information warriors in shaping public perceptions of the event. These operations began almost at the precise moment of the crash.
Leaked files related to the activities of Integrity Initiative, a Foreign Office black propaganda unit staffed by British military and intelligence veterans, contain countless references to battling Kremlin “narratives” around MH17. For example, one of its operatives was listed in the documents as a “continuous commentator” in the studio of LBC, one of Britain’s largest radio stations which reaches millions of listeners weekly, on the night of the incident.
In Foreign Office funding submissions in 2018, Integrity Initiative proposed organizing focus groups with select Russian and Russian-speaking audiences, who would be invited to “rebut Western analyses of key media stories (e.g. MH17, Litvinenko, Skripal, doping)” and explain why they supported “counter narratives” about these issues, which pointed away from Moscow.
The results of this effort would be shared with British intelligence agencies and members of the Initiative’s overseas “clusters” – secret networks of spooks, academics, journalists, pundits and politicians – to assist in battling these “narratives” via news outlets and social media. Notably, all Integrity Initiative’s cluster members are formally trained in the art of online trolling.
Integrity Initiative was one of several propaganda enterprises launched by a shadowy Foreign Office unit known as the Counter Disinformation and Media Development (CDMD). The unit is overseen by senior intelligence officer Andy Pryce, who personally “handles” British journalist Paul Mason and likely many other media personalities. Its stated remit is to “weaken the Russian state’s influence” in countries comprising the former Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact and Yugoslavia.
The flagship component of this multi-million pound effort is Open Information Partnership (OIP). Though OIP has posed as a grassroots endeavor to battle Kremlin “disinformation,” leaked files related to the project make abundantly clear it is, in fact, a British-sponsored “troll factory.” Through a covertly funded nexus of ‘independent’ NGOs, fact-checkers, news outlets and citizen journalists across Central and Eastern Europe, the initiative deluges the media environment with a ceaseless stream of anti-Russian propaganda.
Among OIP’s founding “partners” was Bellingcat. For the first three years of its existence, Bellingcat trained participating organizations “in open source research and social media investigation,” while “developing a cadre of organizations with a digital forensic skillset.” In the process, it raked in vast sums from the Foreign Office. Its MH17 investigation was explicitly cited as a reference point for this activity in the Partnership’s founding documents.
OIP’s network was also originally intended to include the Berlin-based “non-profit independent newsroom” Correctiv, which published multiple investigations blaming Russia for MH17. While some of this work won awards, a secret Foreign Office-funded appraisal of the outfit acknowledged its reporting on the crash “[lacked] in-depth background research and due diligence.” However, the outlet’s “excellent” public reputation made it “perhaps the most impressive” of all prospective OIP members.
To advance its anti-Russian machinations, CDMD commissioned extensive target audience analyses of the populations of Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Ukraine and the West Balkans throughout 2017. British intelligence indicated that it sought insights into citizens of these countries’ “current perception and attitude towards Russia,” especially with respect to the Kremlin’s “handling” of events such as Brexit, the Syrian crisis, and MH17.
At the same time, British cutouts like the Integrity Initiative and Pilgrims’ Group helped manage the Western public’s view of MH17 as part of a wider agenda to cultivate popular resentment of Russia.
Pilgrims’ Group manages media covering Ukraine proxy war
These same entities continue to shape Western perceptions of events in Ukraine to this day. A May 2022 “capability statement” outlining Pilgrims Group’s Eastern European footprint refers to the Russian invasion “[triggering] a rapid scaling up” of its operations in Kiev.
Pilgrims Group has provided “support networks, including logistics and equipment, to media crews covering the conflict,” and embedded “dozens” of “security consultants” in the ranks of “almost all major international news organisations” active in the country.” Strikingly, the statement adds that all Pilgrims Group security teams in Kiev boast Ukrainian “special police or MoD [Ministry of Defence] backgrounds.”
Once again, Pilgrims Group has been effectively placed in charge of where journalists can travel, what they see, and who they interview in a conflict. Yet even as it helps shape public perceptions of a Western proxy war, the company has managed to remain conveniently in the shadows.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
Facebook Censoring The Inconvenient Truth About Antarctic Temperatures
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | May 6, 2023
This post came up on my Facebook today:
https://www.facebook.com/william.dunn.1238/posts/pfbid036joG1b82T95G59BVS3uTQT1wYL26XMEBFVyMWto8CdzfBhTWBQ7YecGyr9GREWxol
When you click on SEE WHY, this comes up:
And this is the story the Facebook censors don’t want you to see:
Quite why Facebook would want to rely on the USA Today for its source of science is a mystery. Perhaps they should have actually checked what real scientists are saying:
Abstract
The Antarctic continent has not warmed in the last seven decades, despite a monotonic increase in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases.
In this paper, we investigate whether the high orography of the Antarctic ice sheet (AIS) has helped delay warming over the continent. To that end, we contrast the Antarctic climate response to CO2-doubling with present-day orography to the response with a flattened AIS. To corroborate our findings, we perform this exercise with two different climate models. We find that, with a flattened AIS, CO2-doubling induces more latent heat transport toward the Antarctic continent, greater moisture convergence over the continent and, as a result, more surface-amplified condensational heating. Greater moisture convergence over the continent is made possible by flattening of moist isentropic surfaces, which decreases humidity gradients along the trajectories on which extratropical poleward moisture transport predominantly occurs, thereby enabling more moisture to reach the pole. Furthermore, the polar meridional cell disappears when the AIS is flattened, permitting greater CO2-forced warm temperature advection toward the Antarctic continent. Our results suggest that the high elevation of the present AIS plays a significant role in decreasing the susceptibility of the Antarctic continent to CO2-forced warming.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-020-00143-w
I’ll post this on Facebook and see how long it takes for the censors to strike!
WHO Denies Pandemic Treaty Will Reduce Sovereignty of States – But it’s Pure Propaganda
BY DR DAVID BELL | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | MAY 6, 2023
The Director General of the World Health Organisation (WHO) reassures us that the WHO’s ‘pandemic accord’ (or ‘treaty’) won’t reduce the sovereignty of Member States. The WHO trusts that these words will serve as a distraction from reality. Those driving the perpetual health emergency agenda are planning to give WHO more power, and states less. This will happen whenever WHO designates a ‘Public Health Emergency of International Concern’ (PHEIC), or considers we may be at risk of one.
The WHO’s proposed treaty, taken together with its ‘synergistic’ amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR), aim to undo centuries of democratic reform that based sovereignty with individuals, and by extension their state. The discomfort of facing this truth and the complexities it raises is providing the cover needed to push these changes through. This is how democracy, and freedom, wither and die.
Why it’s hard to acknowledge reality
Our society in the West is built on trust and a feeling of superiority – we built the institutions that run the world and they, and we, are good. We consider ourselves humanitarians, the public health advocates, the unifiers, and anti-fascist freedom-lovers. We consider our system is better than the alternatives – we are ‘progressive’.
It takes quite a step for comfortable, middle-income, Left-leaning professionals to believe that the institutions and philanthropic organisations we have admired all our lives might now be pillaging us. Our society relies on having ‘trusted sources’, the WHO being one of them. Among others are our major media organisations. If our trusted sources told us we were being misled and pillaged, we would accept this. But they are telling us these claims are false, and that all is well. The WHO’s Director General himself assures us of this. Anyone who thinks rich corporate and private sponsors of WHO and other health institutions are self-interested, that they might mislead and exploit others for their own benefit, is a conspiracy theorist.
We are all capable of believing the rich and powerful of past ages would exploit the masses, but somehow this is hard to believe in the present. For proof of their benevolence, we rely on the word of their own publicity departments and the media they support. Somehow, malfeasance on a grand scale is always a figment of history, and now we are smarter and enlightened.
Over recent decades we have watched individuals accumulate wealth equivalent to medium-sized countries. They meet our elected leaders behind closed doors at Davos. We then applaud the largesse they bestow on the less fortunate, and pretend all this is fine. We watch as corporations expand across national borders, seemingly above the laws that apply to ordinary citizens. We allowed their ‘public-private partnerships’ to turn international institutions into purveyors of their commodities. We ignored this descent because their publicity departments told us to, becoming apologists for obvious authoritarians because we want to believe they are somehow doing a ‘greater good’.
Whilst a schoolchild might see through this facade to the conflicted greed beyond, it is much harder for those with years of political baggage, a peer network, reputation and career to admit they have been duped. The behavioural psychologists that our governments and institutions now employ understand this. Their job is to keep us believing the trusted sources they sponsor. Our challenge is to put reality above right-think.
The remaking of WHO
When the WHO was set up in 1946 to help coordinate responses to major health issues, the world was emerging from the last great bout of fascism and colonialism. Both these societal models were sold on the basis of centralising power for a greater good. Those who considered themselves superior would run the world for those less worthy. The WHO once claimed to follow a different line.
Since the early 2000s WHO’s activities have been increasingly dictated by ‘specified funding’. Its funders, increasingly including private and corporate interest, tell it how to use the money they give. Private direction is fine for private organisations promoting their investors’ wares, but it is obviously a non-starter for an organisation seeking to mandate medicines, close borders and confine people. Anyone with a basic understanding of history and human nature will recognise this. But these powers are exactly what the amendments to the International Health Regulations and the new treaty intend.
Rather than consider alternate approaches, WHO is seeking censorship of opinions not fitting its narrative, publicly denigrating and demeaning those who question its policies. These are not the actions of an organisation representing ‘we the people’, or confident in its ability to justify its actions. They are the trappings we have always associated with intellectual weakness and fascism.
WHO’s impact on population health
In its 2019 pandemic influenza recommendations, WHO stated that “not in any circumstances” should contact tracing, border closures, entry or exit screening or quarantine of exposed individuals be undertaken in an established pandemic. It wrote this because such measures would cause more harm than good, and disproportionately harm poorer people. In 2020, in conjunction with private and national sponsors, it supported the largest wealth shift in history from low to high income by promoting these same measures.
In abandoning its principles, WHO abandoned millions of girls to nightly rape through child marriage, increased teenage pregnancies and child mortality, reduced childhood education, and grew poverty and malnutrition. Despite most of these people being too young to be troubled by Covid and already having immunity, they promoted billions of dollars of mass vaccination whilst traditional priorities such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS deteriorate. Western media have met this with silence or empty rhetoric. Saving lives does not turn a profit, but selling commodities does. The WHO’s sponsors are doing what they need for their investors, whilst WHO is doing what it needs to keep their money flowing.
The new powers of WHO
The IHR amendments will reduce the sovereignty of any WHO Member State that fails to actively reject them, giving a single person (the Director General) direct influence over health policy and the freedom of its citizens is indisputable. It is what the document says. Countries are required to “undertake” to follow the WHO’s “recommendations”, which are no longer simply suggestions or advice. Whilst the WHO does not have a police force, the World Bank and IMF are on board, and control much of your money supply. The U.S. Congress passed a bill last year recognising that the U.S. Government should address countries that do not comply with the IHR. We are not witnessing toothless threats; most countries, and their people, will have little choice.
The real power of the WHO’s proposals is in their application for any health-related matter they proclaim to be a threat. The proposed amendments state this explicitly, whilst the ‘Treaty’ expands the scope to ‘One-Health‘, a hijacked public health concept that can mean anything perceived to be affecting human physical, mental or social well-being. Inclement weather, crop failures or the promulgation of ideas that cause people stress – everyday things that humans have always coped with, now become reasons to confine people and impose solutions dictated by others.
In essence, those sponsoring WHO are manufacturing crises of their own desiring, and are set to get wealthier from other’s misery, as they did during Covid. This under the guise of ‘keeping us safe’. As WHO implausibly insists, “no one is safe until all are safe”, so removal of human rights must be broad and prolonged. Behavioural psychology is there to ensure that we comply.
Facing the future
We are building a future in which compliance with authoritarian dictates will win the return of stolen freedoms, whilst censorship will suppress dissent. People who wish to see evidence, who remember history or insist on informed consent will be designated, in WHO parlance, far-Right mass killers. We have already entered this world. Public figures who claim otherwise are presumably not paying attention, or have other motivations.
We can meekly accept this new disease-obsessed world, some may even embrace the salaries and careers it bestows. Or we can join those fighting for the simple right of individuals to determine their own future. At the very least, we can acknowledge the reality around us.
Dr. David Bell is a clinical and public health physician with a PhD in population health and background in internal medicine, modelling and epidemiology of infectious disease. Previously, he was Programme Head for Malaria and Acute Febrile Disease at FIND in Geneva, and coordinating malaria diagnostics strategy with the World Health Organisation. He is a member of the Executive Committee of PANDA.
Unrepentant Corona arch-villain Christian Drosten re-emerges to give the vaccines credit for ending the pandemic
Insists that lockdowns and school closures remain policy options in the future
Virus-understander-in-chief Christian Drosten posing as a scrappy compassionate avatar of The Science, rather than the conniving and perpetually wrong loser that he is.
eugyppius: a plague chronicle | May 6, 2023
That eternal turd who will not flush, Christian Drosten, has resurfaced with an odious media interview, demanding that the vaccines receive credit for ending the pandemic and that oppressive non-pharmaceutical interventions like lockdowns and school closures remain on the table for future pandemics.
From Tagesspiegel :
The measures taken by the federal and state governments in the Corona pandemic proved highly controversial and triggered fierce debates. The Berlin Charité virologist Christian Drosten, among the advocates of harsh restrictions, has now warned against drawing the wrong conclusions. The “fundamental, ideological exclusion of lockdowns and school closures” is foolhardy, Drosten told the newspapers of the Funke Mediengruppe.
“Not all pathogens have the same characteristics. A virus could surface that is especially dangerous for children, for example, or that triggers insidious sequelae despite a harmless initial infection.”
“The school closures in 2020 and 2021 were a mistake, but please don’t take away our power to close schools again in the future! The next virus might really be dangerous to children! We don’t always cry wolf, except when we do!”
Infections such like mumps and measles have caused brain inflammation, diabetes or infertility, the director of the Institute of Virology added. “If such a virus developed into a highly transmissible pandemic pathogen, politicians would inevitably have to take measures. You can’t categorically rule out things like lockdowns and school closures, that’s neither realistic nor responsible.”
Yes, you can categorically rule out lockdowns and school closures. We literally never did any of this before at this scale or for this duration in response to any virus, nor were lockdowns or other invasive measures ever even contemplated until the Chinese gave you guys a bunch of evil ideas three years ago. What’s more, all of your interventions were utter, abject failures; they did nothing.
Drosten also criticised the public debate on Covid vaccinations, which “is often still destructive.” The fact that further Covid vaccinations for children and many adults are now no longer recommended “does not prove that vaccines have always been unnecessary,” the Charité professor emphasised.
“Rather, with the help of vaccinations, we have mitigated the impact of infections and developed a high level of immunity in the population. This is the only reason that the vaccine recommendations could now be changed.”
Had we vaccinated not a single soul, we’d have identical levels of immunity in the population right now from Omicron. We also wouldn’t have all those awkward vaccine injury headlines.
In case you’re not yet angry enough, though, it gets worse:
The director of the Institute for International Health at Charité, Beate Kampmann, warned against vaccine scepticism. “Vaccination is not only about the well-being of the individual, but also about the health of society as a whole, that is public health, and that also means solidarity,” she told the newspapers.
“Sometimes people forget that they contribute to the protection of everyone with their personal decision. That was true for Corona, but it’s also true for measles, for example.”
Why are these assholes always lying, I want to know. The vaccines were not intended to stop transmission, the trials weren’t designed to show whether they would stop transmission, and we’ve known beyond all doubt since the summer of 2021 that they don’t stop transmission. Nobody who was vaccinated against Corona contributed to anybody else’s health at all, this is all just a straight-up untruth.
The pandemicists aren’t going away. They have amassed a great toolkit of new powers, and they will be slinking around for decades waiting for the next opportunity to try them out all over again. Now that the virus hysteria has boiled off and some minimal standards of rationality have returned to the discussion, it should be a priority to discredit every last one of these virus pests, Corona astrologers, modellers, and panic mongerers, now and for all time. Otherwise we’re at great risk for getting the same thing all over again.
Kuwait to join Shanghai regional bloc as ‘dialogue partner’
MEMO | May 6, 2023
Kuwait signed a memorandum of understanding on Saturday to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a powerful regional bloc led by China and Russia, Anadolu reports.
The document was inked on the sidelines of a meeting of the SCO foreign ministers on May 4-5 in Panaji city, India, the state news agency KUNA reported.
“Kuwait’s joining of SCO as a dialogue partner is the first step towards joining the organization as a full member in the future,” said Kuwaiti Ambassador to India Jassim Al-Najem.
He added that the accession of some Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries as dialogue partners to the SCO “confirms the growing importance of the organization.”
On March 29, Saudi Arabia agreed to join the SCO as a dialogue partner in preparation for full membership.
The SCO was founded in June 2001 by China, Russia, and the Central Asian states of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
The Eurasian political, economic, and security alliance is recognized as the world’s largest regional organization, with eight members, four observer states and several dialogue partners, including Turkiye.
Pakistan and India became full members in 2017.
Iran, an SCO observer state since June 2005, had its permanent membership approved in September 2021 and signed a memorandum of commitment a year later for its full accession.
Fake News Alert: It’s Extremely Unlikely That Kiev Shot Down A Hypersonic Missile
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | MAY 6, 2023
The Commander of the Ukrainian Air Force claimed on Saturday that his forces shot down a hypersonic missile with the help of the US’ Patriots, which Mainstream Media outlets like CNN took at face value to question Russia’s related capabilities. It’s extremely unlikely that this happened, though, since no air defense system anywhere in the world at this time is able to intercept any such projectile traveling at ten times the speed of sound. At most, there might have been an accidental hit or a technical malfunction.
Either of those scenarios would represent statistical anomalies, especially the first one, which means that it’s almost certainly the case that Kiev is just lying through its teeth yet again. It makes sense why it would do so at this particular time since its perception managers hope to dent Russians’ pride ahead of Victory Day, sow the seeds of doubt about its hypersonic capabilities with the intent of deterring purchases whenever they’re eventually put to the market, and exaggerate the Patriots’ effectiveness.
Furthermore, Kiev was likely tipped off about CNN’s investigation into Russia’s electronic jamming of their much-hyped HIMARS missile systems by some of those same Pentagon officials that the outlet cited in their report, which was also released on Saturday. In response, they could have then prepared this latest fake news provocation with the expectation of carrying it out on the same day that CNN’s report was published, thus distracting the public from this unsavory story.
Even so, as was noted in the introduction, CNN had no problem taking their side’s claim at face value and subsequently spinning it for maximum anti-Russian soft power effect. It obviously has the experts on hand who, if they were honest, would have informed them that the Patriots are incapable of shooting down hypersonic missiles. By not relying on those professionals’ insight prior to publishing their report and inserting their opinion into it, CNN once again exposed its anti-Russian bias.
The same observation can be said about all those other Mainstream Media outlets that reported on this fake news story without including any reference to the Patriots’ lack of requisite capabilities for achieving this literally unprecedented military feat. They uncritically repeat Kiev’s most ridiculous claims about the NATO-Russian proxy war despite knowing better like in this instance, which proves that they don’t conduct genuine journalism anymore and only parrot a foreign country’s propaganda nowadays.
Over 126,000 Donbass Residents Recognized as Victims Since 2014 – Investigative Committee
Sputnik – 06.05.2023
Russian investigators have established that over 126,000 residents of the Donbass region became victims of the crimes committed by Kiev since 2014, with the damage to the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics surpassing 228 billion rubles ($2.9 billion), the head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, said.
“More than 9,500 civilians were injured in the armed conflict, and over 5,000 civilians were killed. Over the entire period of the investigation in this criminal case, more than 259,000 people were interrogated, and over 126,000 people were recognized as victims, including about 24,000 minors,” Bastrykin said.
Bastrykin also said that the investigation analyzed the destruction in the cities of Mariupol, Rubezhnoe, Schastie, Krasnyi Luch, Stakhanov, Kirovsk, Alchevsk, Lisichansk and others, adding that the damage assessment in other cities was underway.
Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, after the DPR and LPR appealed for help in defending themselves against Ukrainian provocations. In response to Russia’s operation, Western countries have rolled out a comprehensive sanctions campaign against Moscow and have been supplying weapons to Ukraine.
On September 30, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the heads of the DPR and LPR, as well as the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, signed agreements on the accession of these territories to Russia, following referendums that showed that an overwhelming majority of the local population supported becoming part of Russia.
Odessa Massacre 9 Years On… West’s Shameful Silence
Strategic Culture Foundation | May 5, 2023
This week saw the ninth anniversary of a shocking massacre of 42 civilians in Odessa by Ukrainian fascists. Only weeks prior to that, the fascists’ political leaders had carried out a violent coup in Kiev.
The barbarity of the Odessa atrocity was unspeakable but emblematic of the NATO-backed fascist regime that seized power illegally in February 2014.
Significantly, and shamefully, the Western media and governments hardly mention that horror, or if they do, they tend to distort the incident and typically, yet baselessly, accuse Russia of disinformation.
On May 2, 2014, hundreds of protesters in Odessa against the fascist Kiev regime became embroiled in violent clashes with supporters of the regime. Thousands of far-right paramilitaries belonging to the NeoNazi Right Sector had been transported from the north to the southern port city of Odessa on the Black Sea under the guise of attending a football match.
Street battles ensued all day with cobblestones, Molotov cocktails and gunfire exchanged by both factions. By evening, the more numerous pro-regime crowds turned their focus on a tent encampment of anti-regime protesters near the Soviet-era Trade Unions building in the center of Odessa. The encampment was a peaceful gathering which included women and children. It had been set up for several weeks to demonstrate opposition to the Maidan events in Kiev.
The anti-regime protesters were opposed to the coup that had taken place in Kiev weeks earlier by the so-called EuroMaidan movement. On February 20, a gruesome sniper massacre in Kiev (later found to have been carried out by CIA-backed fascists) led to the overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych. The latter had maintained friendly relations with Russia which far-right Ukrainian factions abhorred. Yanukovych’s government was strongly supported by Ukrainians of ethnic Russian heritage mainly in the south and eastern parts of the country.
The fascist regime that came to power in Kiev in February 2014 and which prevails till this day – albeit with a president, Vladimir Zelensky, who is nominally of Jewish ancestry – was opposed from the outset by many Ukrainians. They viewed the new rulers as unelected and illegitimate. They were also fearful of the NeoNazi factions that openly glorified Ukrainian figures like Stepan Bandera who had collaborated with Nazi Germany during the Second World War in the mass murder of their own compatriots.
That is why the people of the Crimea peninsula voted in a referendum in March 2014 to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation. In other parts of Ukraine, the southeast Donbass region also repudiated the Kiev regime and its “anti-Russian” hostility. In May, 2014, the Kiev regime proceeded to launch its so-called Anti-Terror Operation on the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Lugansk with the backing of then CIA chief John Brennan on a visit to the country. The U.S. vice president at the time was Joe Biden who served as Washington’s point man for the new regime. That aggression marked the beginning of the civil war in Ukraine which culminated in the present conflict with Russia, and the joining last year of the Donbass and neighboring regions with the Russian Federation.
This was the context in Ukraine in May, 2014. The country was in turmoil and splitting into ethnic and political divides. Cities like Odessa had strong historical and cultural connections with Russia. The city known as the Pearl on the Black Sea owing to its storied trading economy was founded in 1795 by Catherine the Great, the empress of Russia.
When the NATO-backed putschists seized power in Kiev in a bloody coup and began organizing Nazi-style torchlit processions, many ethnic Russian people in Ukraine and others were horrified. Odessa was one such city with a large Russian population. The city had suffered mass killings by Nazi Einsatzgruppen SS death squads and their local henchmen.
When the Kiev regime fascists targeted the protest camp in Odessa on the evening of May 2, some 300 of the protesters took refuge inside the Trade Unions building. The mob outside bombarded the historic building with incendiary devices setting it ablaze. The deliberate intention was to incinerate all those inside. The hatred shown by the Right Sector attackers towards the trapped victims was appalling. Several of the people in the building tried to escape the flames by jumping out of high-rise windows. As their bodies smashed the ground below, frenzied crowds clubbed them to death.
In all, 42 people were murdered in the Trade Unions building massacre. Not one attacker was ever prosecuted. The Kiev regime refused to carry out any adequate investigation.
However, the horror of that day was a turning point for many Ukrainians and Russians. It revealed the hideous nature of the regime that had seized power over the country and its vile fascist hostility toward Russia.
This is the regime that was brought to power by Washington and its NATO partners. Since 2014, it has been armed and built up to be a war machine to aggress Russia and obliterate all cultural connections with Russia.
The massacre in Odessa should be remembered for the sake of the victims that day. But also remembered because it helps explain the background of how the present U.S.-led NATO proxy conflict in Ukraine with Russia has come about.
For that reason, Western news media and their governments chose to studiously ignore the Odessa massacre. Their shameful silence is necessary in order to conceal the criminal complicity of the West in Ukraine’s deadly turmoil.
The American Government Arguably Played A Role In Kiev’s Arrest Of US Journalist Gonzalo Lira
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | MAY 6, 2023
Dual American-Chilean national Gonzalo Lira was recently arrested by Ukraine’s secret police on charges pertaining to “wartime propaganda”, for which he faces the possibility of 5-8 years in jail. The US Government’s (USG) silence on this incident completely contrasts with its hysteria over Wall Street Journal (WSJ) employee Evan Gershkovich’s arrest in Russia last month on charges of espionage after he was caught red-handed soliciting classified military-industrial information from a regional lawmaker.
This is a betrayal of American principles since the freedom of speech is regarded as a sacred right of all its citizens no matter where they might be at any given time. Regardless of whatever one might think about Lira’s views and the particular piece of Ukrainian legislation that was cited as the basis for arresting him, the USG is supposed to support the rights of its nationals abroad. This is especially so whenever they’re arrested for expressing an opinion and/or practicing journalism like he was.
Its silence in the face of this scandalous incident suggests a degree of complicity in, or at the very least tacit approval of, Lira’s arrest since nothing else cogently explains the conspicuous lack of any response. These suspicions are further reinforced by the fact that one of the USG’s leading information warfare assets in Ukraine, transgender mercenary Michael John Cirillo, admitted to the Daily Beast that he colluded with the SBU on its case against Lira and even plans to testify against him.
In his exact words, “I’ve already given my sworn statement to SBU about Gonzalo Lira several months ago and expect to be called as a witness in his prosecution.” Cirillo also added on Twitter that “When I’m on Capitol Hill in 10 days, no doubt the arrest of Gonzalo Lira will be a prime topic of conversation.” Instead of seeking his release, the USG is relying on one of its top propagandists in that country to pursue Lira’s conviction, prior to which their proxy brazenly plans to boast about this to Congress.
It should also be noted that Cirillo told this to Julia Davis, who’s banned by Russia on the basis of having worked against its national interests at the behest of hostile powers, which obviously refers to the USG in this context. Her article also mentions that she obtained exclusive footage of Lira’s arrest, which could only have been obtained by the SBU, whose employees shared it with her precisely because they know that she’s one of their patron’s most reliable agents and would thus use it to humiliate Lira in her piece.
These facts lead to the conclusion that the USG is indeed complicit in Ukraine’s arrest of this dual American national. It’s not even hiding its complicity in Lira’s persecution either after one of its leading information warfare assets in that country admitted to colluding with the secret police on this case, told the media that he plans to testify against him, and even plans to brag about this to Congress. The USG is perversely proud of this since it hopes to pressure critics of its proxy war into self-censoring.
This objective also clearly includes its own citizens like Lira, who the USG hates with a passion since his brave reporting from Kharkov discredited many of their claims about this conflict. It could have simply requested that Kiev deport him in order to lessen the damage that he’s inflicted on their information warfare operations, but it preferred to make an example out of him by pursuing his prosecution. Cirillo’s role in this incident and his plans to brag about it to Congress leave no doubt about the USG’ complicity.
When the trading gets rough, the pros go insider
The farm to table vertical integration of the gates foundation investing racket
by el gato malo – bad cattitude – may 6, 2023
in the aftermath of great events, “who knew what and when did they know it?” is always an interesting question.
the US intelligence community (michael spenger substack ) was suspected to have caught wind of covid back in november 2019.
astonishingly, the IC itself denies this and claims they were in the dark until later
Every official interviewed by the Committee—from working level analysts at NCMI to an official with relevant knowledge at the NSC—said that their first indication of a novel virus came with the publication of the ProMED notice published at 11:59 p.m. on December 30, 2019 that reported the announcement of a novel virus by the Wuhan Municipal Health Committee.
In sum, the first warnings of COVID-19 came from the non-IC based public health track—in this case disease surveillance conducted by local public health authorities in Wuhan.
but this invites some pretty pointy questions about their competence, no?
because it sure looks like pretty much everyone on the super special inside track of business and finance CLEARLY knew by then.
bill gates knew. the WEF and team davos knew. and they were making big plays to make big money months before the intelligence community is even claimed, much less claims to have known what was going on.
it does make one wonder…
bill gates bought $55 million (with an option for $100mm) of bioNtech stock in september of 2019 right before they suddenly had the intellectual property for the most profitable vaccine in history.
they were not working on vaccines previously.
i wonder where they got the tech?
no one seems to know.
but it sure looks like billy g knew.
so, here’s a fun little nugget from the bill and melinda gates foundation investment into bioNtech, from whom pfizer licensed the IP for the covid vaccine.
pretty prescient for september 2019.
source
does this seem like “boilerplate?”
because it seems oddly specific (but deniable) as a “partnership” on something unrelated that could suddenly be “covid.”
and the timing is awfully provocative especially in light of some other events.
he did well getting out as well.
gates sold in 2021, banking $260 million, pretty much right at the top and has since changed his tune on mRNA vaccines, but this is hardly uncommon for “investors talking their book.”
the rest of this fact pattern looks a bit nastier though, more like the 3.0 sand hill road model of “buy up companies in a space and then mandate the adoption of their products.”
this has been the great game out there since even before kleiner perkins hired al gore to shill and lobby for their greentech portfolio. they are currently playing a similar (and more subtle) game playing hungry hungry hippos with HVAC companies and then pushing through new “air handling mandates” for new buildings, schools, offices, etc. cuz “public health.”
but the gates foundation makes them look like pikers.
if you’re going to make a big push into selling vaccines and drugs, why buy mere lobbyists when you can buy the WHO? gates is by far their largest private donor, 25X the size of the next biggest and was their number 2 donor overall.
$531 million buys A LOT of access and control. it’s perfect. the WHO is not only on the ground all over, but they also give advice and set policy/terms for assistance. so gates gets all the info instantly about what’s happening in diseases and then gets to tell the WHO what to tell everyone to do about it. play the hero and add a zero (to your bank balances).
it’s a truly great grift and few dare call it out as the nasty, hard-knuckle lobbying and advocacy it is because it looks like philanthropy.
weaponized philanthropy to be sure, but “philanthropy” and tax free to boot.
not only did bill get early word on wuhan and reach out and place big money on the one subtle square that was going to pay out huge by suddenly having the answer to the most asked question on earth and coming out of obscure nowhere to partner with pharma titan pfizer, but he went a full step further and actually held a pandemic war game under the auspices of john’s hopkins that gathered top policy makers and thought leaders to assess a global outbreak of an “imaginary” disease that happened to look exactly like SARS-cov2. this was the now infamous “event 201.”
and look who threw the party: the WEF and the gates foundation.
it’s obvious that they knew exactly what was coming. this was the overt planning plenary for covid. it was not pretend. and many/most those attending must have known that. this is the same time gates was buying bioNtech.
the bioNtech investment was 9/4/19. event 201 was 10/18, five weeks later.
who knows how much earlier the due diligence and planning must have begun, especially for the investment.
there’s getting lucky, and there’s putting the fix in because you know what others do not.
tell me that this “imaginary scenario” 2-3 months before the whole world knew what was happening was just a lucky guess.
the “players” were a high powered gang including big business, healthcare companies, the UN, the head of china’s CDC, a number of academics, the head of US CDC preparedness and response, monetary authorities, and media firms.
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UAE tortured, killed journalist for opposing Israel normalization
The Cradle | October 31, 2026
UAE security officers detained, tortured, and killed Emirati poet and news editor Habib al-Sayegh in August 2019, shortly after he published a column opposing UAE normalization with Israel, according to a newly published book.
“Princes and Thieves,” a book by investigative journalist Matthew Cole published on 25 October, alleges that UAE security officers raided Sayegh’s Abu Dhabi home shortly after the publication of the column, hooded him in front of his wife and took him to a detention facility where he was tortured to death.
His interrogators reportedly pulled out several of his teeth with pliers and beat him repeatedly with a sharp metal object.
On 11 August 2019, Sayegh criticized the UAE’s plan to normalize relations with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords in his weekly column for Khaleej newspaper. The column was titled “Israel Is Our Real Enemy and A Dangerous Project.”
Sayegh described Israel as “a real and natural enemy” while questioning “who authorized the normalizers to speak on behalf of everyone?”
Nine days after the column was published, Emirati state media announced his death, without stating a cause. … continue
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